Teachers Scrap Lesson Plans To Tackle Trump’s Executive Order

By
Rebecca Klein

Huffington Post

February 01, 2017

English teacher Tom Rademacher planned to have his middle school classes start reading a new one-act play Monday. Instead, on Sunday, he scrapped the idea. As he watched protests break out across the country over President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration, he decided to take the opportunity to tackle more pertinent subjects.

Rademacher, who hails from Minneapolis, teaches mostly students of color. The past year has been tough for them. In July, a local police officer shot and killed Philando Castile during a traffic stop, highlighting already fraught tensions between police officers and minority communities. In recent weeks, amid the election of Trump, Rademacher has fielded worries from students about people getting deported, about an outbreak of war, about the national guard getting sent to Chicago and potentially disrupting the lives of family members. His students have continually expressed concerns over the value ― or seeming lack of value ― society places on their lives and experiences.